Released between 2011 and 2014, AMD's fam15h (and its approximately-contemporaneous relatives, fam10h, fam14h and fam16h) are the final high-performance x86_64 microprocessors lacking most of the limitations newer x86 platforms are encumbered by. In many cases, fam15h hardware can provide a performant, full-featured system, using entirely free and open source software. It enforces no firmware signing (allowing things such as coreboot), can be booted entirely with free firmware (including memory initialization), and it requires no privileged management coprocessor (such as the Platform Security Processor or Management Engine, found on newer AMD and Intel platforms respectively). Where a Board Management Controller is present, it can usually reliably disabled, or better yet, flashed with OpenBMC. On fam10h, even microcode is unencrypted and unsigned, and can be modified by the user.
Beyond their currently-unparalleled degree of firmware freedom for a modern x86_64 platform, AMD hardware of this era (in particular, 6200 and 6300-series Opteron platforms) remains a powerful and cost-effective option for many systems, especially under parallel workloads. Despite this, the comparative popularity of competing Intel processors during this era has limited the familiarity and uptake of these pre-Zen AMD platforms among many enthusiasts.
If you are looking for an x86_64 platform under your complete control, this website serves to demystify fam15h and its relatives, so that these systems can remain in operation well into the future.
What hardware was that again?
Robust support for coreboot on select fam15h motherboards has been developed and thoroughly tested at 15h.org. The current, production ready motherboards are KCMA-D8, KGPE-D16, H8SCM, and H8SGL. A handful of other fam15h motherboards have preliminary support. For these motherboards, the Bulldozer and Piledriver microarchitectures are supported by coreboot-15h.
Stable Support in coreboot-15h
coreboot-15h ports for these boards work with a wide range of peripherals (in some cases supporting more hardware than their stock firmware), have reliable hardware-based fan control, and have been deployed successfully by 15h.org community members. Review the corresponding motherboard page for missing or untested features. For source, see our git forge.
coreboot-15h ports for these boards may be complete enough to be used in a production setting, depending on your needs. Review the corresponding motherboard page for missing features, known bugs, or untested features.
